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Is it normal to go this nuts over your kid’s birthday?

Parents. help me out. I feel like I am a little obsessed and have been for several days up until tomorrow, which is Blossom’s third birthday.

Maybe I am feeling the extra compulsion to make things “normal” for her, given the upheaval she has had to bear in these last months. She cried the whole way home last week after I picked her up from her dad’s, saying “i just miss my Daddy, I just want him to come back to our house.” I know she is mirroring my stubborn wish to have a family again, but that her pain is so real, so acute for her.

I think part of me is over compensating for the separation anxiety she is feeling at this stage of uncertainty.

But may it is also this: this is the moment, 3 yrs ago, that i became a mother, that I pushed through the worst pain, the worst terror to the biggest joy I ever experienced. The moment when the midwife placed her little body on top of mine and she swiped at her eyes like, “shit, it is bright in here,” I still feel it on my skin.

She said to me in the car today, “Mamma, I don’t want you anymore.” And when I asked her what she meant she said, “I just want to be with my Daddy all the time.”

So, despite all my values, all my heavyset beliefs in meaningful gift-giving and homespun recycling, I went out and spent too much money on disposable fun and needless, girlie fashion. I did get her a wooden train set and some second hand shoes, but even there I felt guilty.

i love that child with all my being and i know that I will now spend my whole life wondering if I made the right choices for her and that, just like with “age reversal skin cream” there is no way to tell if it is working.

i watch her sleep in my bed during bouts of insomnia and I have horrible visions of the world in 15 years. I inagine her asking me why I had a child knowing the state of humanity, of the world, of the planet. I wonder if she will be upset at me for having thrust her into this world. Or if she will understand, like i did, and I do, that she made the choice, that she shouldered her way in.

I hope tomorrow is a day of wonder for her. I hope she revels in the love of her people, that she knows in her heart how remarkable a 3 yr old she really is. I hope I am able to shelter her, teach her, soothe her and support her and that her father is able to do the same. I hope that its not the things, she remembers, but the intention behind them. I hope we make it through this next phase intact, as a fragile, openhearted, magic-invested 3 yr old, as a mother, as a species, as a planet.

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1 thought on “Is it normal to go this nuts over your kid’s birthday?”

Miranda,
What a lovely heartfelt blog. They don’t tell us how hard parenting is. Your little Blossom with surprise you in marvelous ways. You are a wonderful mother and she is lucky to have you.
Much love to you both.